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Tag: 2016 primaries
Democratic Turnout In New Hampshire Primary Breaks 2008 Record

Democratic Turnout In New Hampshire Primary Breaks 2008 Record

More than 290,000 New Hampshire voters participated in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary — a significant increase from 2016.

Turnout appears to have broken the state’s record, set during the 2008 election.

As of Wednesday morning, with about 96 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, 293,550 ballots had been recorded, well above the 249,587 votes cast in the last New Hampshire Democratic primary. The state’s previous record for the Democrats primary was 287,556 votes cast in the 2008 race between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and several other prominent candidates.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was victorious on Tuesday night scoring approximately 26 percent of the overall vote, with more than 91 percent of the state’s precincts counted. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar were the only other candidates earning convention delegates, garnering about 24 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

The GOP primary results were less encouraging for Donald Trump, who still managed to handily defeat his opponent.

For months, Trump has claimed again and again to enjoy an “all time high” 95 percent approval rating among Republicans. At a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Monday, Trump also claimed 40,000 to 50,000 had shown up to support him, though the venue capacity was less than 12,000 people.

On Tuesday, Trump received less than 86 percent of the vote, with more than 90 percent of precincts reporting. Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who was the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee in 2016 and has amassed less than one percent of Trump’s war chest for this race, received more than nine percent of the vote.

GOP turnout was also only a little over half of Democratic turnout for the primary. And it was way down from 2016, when Trump faced better-funded opponents than Weld.

As Vox noted on Wednesday, there’s a small caveat in the turnout numbers. New Hampshire voters who aren’t registered with a party are free to vote in whichever primary they choose, but registered Republicans or Democrats “must vote in their respective primaries.” That means Democratic turnout was likely propped up by the relatively noncompetitive Republican race.

“… An NBC News exit poll showed that 43 percent of the Democratic primary electorate in the state were independents, only slightly up from 40 percent in 2016, which would seem to suggest that there wasn’t a big influx of independents who voted on the Republican side in 2016 and switched to the Democrats this time around,” the outlet wrote.

Trump will likely fare better in other states, where Republican officials have rigged or canceled the primaries to ensure he wins.

Democrats will vote next in the February 22 Nevada caucuses and the February 29 South Carolina primaries.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

IMAGE: Bernie Sanders smiles after winning at his 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary night rally in Concord, New Hampshire February 9, 2016. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Clinton Has The Numbers, But Sanders Not Yet Ready To Concede

Clinton Has The Numbers, But Sanders Not Yet Ready To Concede

Hillary Clinton made history on Monday when she reached the delegate count needed to become the first woman to head a major party ticket in U.S history., but Bernie Sanders and his team are not ready to concede just yet.

The Vermont senator held a press conference Monday morning, announcing that he would keep campaigning until next week’s primary in Washington D.C. After the Associated Press declared Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sanders stuck to his promise, holding a rally Monday night in which he did not mention the news.

Former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner took the stage to speak for Sanders and denounce the media’s calling of the race. “We will not relent,” Turner said to the enthusiastic crowd. “We will fight on. And when the mainstream already calls the election … to suppress the vote in California, we will fight on!”

As a response to news of Clinton securing the nomination, Sanders communications director Michael Briggs issued a statement accusing the media of rushing to judgment before superdelegates actually cast their votes at the convention this summer. “Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination,” the statement claimed.

Early Tuesday, exactly eight years after Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination to then-candidate Barack Obama, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver sent an email to supporters asking them to continue to stand for Sanders’ political revolution, “defy the pundits” and “shock the establishment.” Weaver mentioned what he called pundits attempts to “call this race early before every last person votes,” and warned that this threatened to suppress voter turnout in the states that are yet to cast their votes.

Weaver also affirmed that the race will carry on until the convention in Philadelphia next month. “We should let the voters decide who they want the Democratic nominee to be rather than having the media decide for them.” The email continued. Weaver told MSNBC that the Sanders campaign still hopes to swing the votes of pledged delegates in their favor, and that they will intensity their outreach to superdelegates once the voting is done

However, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the only sitting senator supporting Sanders, offered a different tone last Thursday, saying that the Democratic Party should already be united by the convention, and that he believed that once a candidate had the majority of pledged delegates, the party will have made its decision and should come together.

“Should Secretary Clinton win these key categories, I think the conversation will begin about how to bring the sides together so we can go into the convention united, go out of the convention even more united, and make sure that this charlatan, this self-promoting charlatan, Donald Trump, does not become president.” Merkley told CNN.

While Clinton has already reached the necessary number of delegates by counting superdelegates that support her, she will be able to make a much stronger case to Democratic voters after a successful primary night. With President Obama rumored to be ready to endorse Clinton later this week, Sanders’ concession is the last step for the Democratic Party’s unity.

Photo: Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign rally in Cloverdale, California, U.S. June 3, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam